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11 April 2010

What You Can Do To Stem The Tide of Suck

Want to know the state of the world in which we now live?

"A recent report by the National Endowment for the Arts found that 53 percent of Americans surveyed hadn't read a book in the previous year." (Source: McManus, John. "The New American. 5/26/08)

1/3 of high school graduates never read another book for the rest of their lives.
42 percent of college graduates never read another book after college.
80 percent of U.S. families did not buy or read a book last year.
70 percent of U.S. adults have not been in a bookstore in the last five years. (Source: Jerold Jenkins, www.JenkinsGroupInc.com)

Each day in the U.S., people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines. (Source: Veronis, Suhler & Associates investment banker)

Only about half of Americans exercise regularly (at least three sessions a week for 30 minutes at a time), and the percentage of exercisers declined last year compared to 2008. (Source: WebMD Jan 21, 2010 http://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/news/20100121/are-americans-backing-off-exercise)

Percent of noninstitutionalized adults age 20 years and over who are overweight or obese: 67% (2005-2006)

Percent of noninstitutionalized adults age 20 years and over who are obese: 34% (2005-2006) (Source: ttp://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/overwt.htm)

What does this tell us? It seems to indicate that Americans there are very few intelligent people remaining in the United States of America in 2010. Instead of the robust, crafty motherfuckers who populated this nation centuries ago, we've reduced ourselves to a nation of fat slobs who can barely read, and who are educated entirely by the television. Additionally, the last two statistics show that prison is essentially celebrity fit club for criminals, as criminals are by and large indigents, and it is perennially impecunious who boast the highest incidence of obesity.

I realize that a significant proportion of my readership resents every single call to arms that I post on this blog, finding them for whatever reason distasteful. Luckily, I don't give a flying fuck, because I work for free. To this point, I've posted 130 blogs, which I estimate average of 3 hours in terms of direct prep work in the form of research and writing. This excludes the countless hours of reading spent outside the direct result you find in this blog, but for the sake of relative accuracy, I'll go with 3 hours per blog. That means that you have benefited from the result of nearly 400 hours of work on my part, free of cost, and as such, I'll post whatever the fuck I want, as I don't owe you a motherfucking thing.

The most amusing part of the negative reaction I find with this blog is the fact that people seem to think I'm wasting their time with my rants. This is humorous for two reasons: one, it's a scathing indictment of our society that everything has been commoditized to the point where people actually believe that their free time has a significant, if ephemeral, monetary value. This just in- it has no value, real or perceived. How do I know this? The answer to that question lies in the second reason I find the negative reactions to be humorous in the first place- I know that the free time of the overwhelming majority of Americans is valueless because "people spend 4 hours watching TV, 3 hours listening to the radio and 14 minutes reading magazines" every day. If that time would not be otherwise occupied by something important, and no, 24 is not fucking important, then that time is completely without value.

Conceited, but not that conceited.

I don't have the conceit to think that one lunatic could buck the will and ideas of millions. I do think, however, that I might shed some light on the situation in which we find ourselves. Once we do so, we might become a new race of Titans, bent on the destruction of the sea of decrepit, slothful, idiotic teeming hordes in which we find ourself constantly mired. Rather than being the dying breath of a bygone era, we could become the new face of humanity, standing as bulwarks against the obesity and ignorance that pervade the modern world. I also believe that a complete rejection of the world as it stands is essential to forging the strength of body that I espouse, due to the fact that a society as lazy and useless as our own is incapable of the painful, protracted battle against suck that are our daily trips to the mecca of metal.

It is partially for this reason that I refuse to adhere to any strict program in the gym- modern society has developed a frighting obsession with reducing each day to a mechanical void wherein billions of people relive the same miserable, desolate day in a neverending virtual film loop, like a horribly dull, unfunny, politically correct mashup of Equilibrium and Groundhog Day. As such, there's little sense in making every visit to the gym just as robotic and rote as the rest of one's day- Why pile on more repetition in a life that's defined by a series of barely altered iterations of the same 24 hour period?

"I don't have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It's a depression. Everybody's out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel's work, banks are going bust, shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there's nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there's no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TV's while some local newscaster tells us that today we had fifteen homicides and sixty-three violent crimes, as if that's the way it's supposed to be. We know things are bad - worse than bad. They're crazy. It's like everything everywhere is going crazy, so we don't go out anymore. We sit in the house, and slowly the world we are living in is getting smaller, and all we say is, 'Please, at least leave us alone in our living rooms. Let me have my toaster and my TV and my steel-belted radials and I won't say anything. Just leave us alone.' Well, I'm not gonna leave you alone. I want you to get mad! I don't want you to protest. I don't want you to riot - I don't want you to write to your congressman because I wouldn't know what to tell you to write. I don't know what to do about the depression and the inflation and the Russians and the crime in the street. All I know is that first you've got to get mad."

-Network, which is an awesome fucking movie that I highly recommend.

I will fucking tell you, however, what it is that you can personally do to stem this tide of suck. This is your homework for the week:

Read a book, in full. The topic is immaterial. I'm personally going to read Natural Hormone Enhancement by Rob Fagin, in addition to my usual spate of fiction.

Pick an exercise on which you want to get better. Do that exercise, at a different point in your workout, and for an array of sets and reps, every day this week- this means, however, that you'll have to drop your volume on the lift for each workout. By the end of the week, you will likely not see dramatic improvements, but you will prove to yourself that you can do the lift as much as you fucking want, and you will definitely determine the form on that exercise that will facilitate gains, due to the fact that by the end of the week you will have to figure out how to make it hurt the least, haha. If you're still worried about the evil, mythical, overtraining monster, consider this: English railway navvies in the 1850s were expected to shovel, by hand, 20 tons of earth daily. Nepalese porters weighing an average of 49.7 kilos routinely transport loads of 90 kilos over 95 kilometers of steep mountain trails per day. (Manthropology, pp. 30-31) I think you'll be able to handle a week of doing the same exercise every day.

Attempt a PR on something at least once.

If you don't want to be an average American, it's time to start fucking acting like a Titan. Let's do it without the half shirts, though.

The common sense assumptions of the average American mean less to me than does the existence of Cheetos, which is to say, less than none. A 2009 poll showed that "The poll also finds that only 62 percent of respondents believe that President Obama was born in America. Of the 38 percent who either don't believe or are unsure, some think he was born in Indonesia, Kenya, the Philippines, or France. Six percent of the total poll respondents also don't think Hawaii is a U.S. state." A 2006 poll showed that "early one-third of young Americans recently polled couldn’t locate Louisiana on a map and nearly half were unable to identify Mississippi." "The study by the new McCormick Tribune Freedom Museum found that 22 percent of Americans could name all five Simpson family members, compared with just 1 in 1,000 people who could name all five First Amendment freedoms." Additionally, "15% of Americans don’t know that the Earth revolves around the sun. Half of the people in the United States (an allegedly “Christian Nation”) can’t name Genesis as the first book in the Bible." As such, I could not fucking care less when some fucking asshole from the internet impugns my common sense. If anything in the US is common, I want no fucking part of it.

Although to be fair, I forgot about the right to petition for redress of grievances.

Dude, your hooligan posts give me faith in humanity. Here's how I look at it: most people through most of human history were born slaves. Those people are still born slaves. What is a slave's dream lifestyle? To be fat, drunk, entertained and stupid.

Some of us dream of being heroes. Maybe I can't be a real Frazetta hero, but I can try to look like one, and aspire to live like a hero, to strive for something better every day.

"The more solitary the being and the more resolute it is in forming its own world against all other conjunctures of worlds in the environment, the more definite and strong the cast of its soul. What is the opposite of the soul of a lion? The soul of a cow. For strength of individual soul the herbivores substitute numbers, the herd, the common feeling and doing of masses. But the less one needs others, the more powerful one is. " -Oswald Spengler

I actually found that movie to be funnier than the rated R version, Observe and Report. That, of course, is akin to stating that Gabriele Sidibe is better looking than Mo'Nique- it's a shit show either way.

I'm in Jamie. The book will be fiction, America Falling by Don Brockette. The exercise will be squats and I'll do my PR attempt on deadlift (with straps). I'm starting on Wednesday (4-13) so I'll post back next Tuesday and tell you how I did.

I gotta wonder just how fat a slob anonymous at 7:30 AM is. Intellectually challenging? Dude, have you read any of the posts on diet alone? Don't drop an anonymous shit bomb in comments. Make an argument. Or fuck off. It's mulitple choice.

I'm in, and coincidentally am already in the process of completing one thing (lifting a big-ass rock every single day), have already set a PR (pulled it in a semi-bearhug twice), so all that's left is to keep lifting and read a book. I'll go check for books now.

P.S. I'm going to read Fight Club. Hopefully the book will stay true to the movie. I got the idea because these "homework assignments" sound like the beginning of the movie where Tyler Durden gives everyone homework assignments. FIRST RULE OF CHAOS AND PAIN IS THAT YOU DO NOT TALK ABOUT CHAOAS AND PAIN. SECOND RULE OF CHAOS AND PAIN IS THAT, IRREGARDLESS OF THE FIRST RULE, ITS OK TO BLOG AND COMMENT ABOUT CHAOS AND PAIN.

The first e-book will likely be out this summer. Filling out the training log is a pain in the dick, but just for you, I'll do it, because I should record the epic shit that occurred yesterday. As for the other blog, I'll get it in there. Interview from another site going up today, just because it took me forever to write.

Wow, Dracoy...you`re defense is further proof that you really meant that first statement.

BTW, I watched that video, you are tiny, you might own those 260 lbs, but Gabriele Sidibe on top of you would totally own you, hahaha. Actually, I would pay to see you two getting it on, that would be hilarious :)

It's not bad. Bit from column A and a bit from column B. There's definitely useful information in there, but it's drier than Zatsiorsky, which is a fucking feat in and of itself, and the dude quotes himself, which I find irksome.

Well, good and bad about stemming the tide of suck. There was only one novel around I would be caught reading since all the others are stuck in unshipped limbo across the country (moved recently), and it was the wrong one in the series for where I was at. I also am not in the mood for Raymond Feist's ridiculous writing.

All that said I'll be getting Brooks Kubik's Muscle, Strength and Power sometime soon so I'll probably just digest that in a matter of hours.

But the rock lifting has gone amazingly and today is the last day I'll need to, since I unwittingly started ahead of schedule.

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